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Markus Flierl's Weblog

Crossbow available on OpenSolaris

FINALLY - Crossbow phase I is now available as IPS packages. Even though Crossbow was already integrated into build 105 of what we call Nevada (the code name for Solaris.Next), it took a while to convert it to IPS. The team has been slaving away for several months now, completing, testing and bug fixing the code that had already been available as a beta since March '08. It's quite amazing how much more effort goes into our code once you think you are done before the Solaris gate keeper agrees with that statement. Our test matrix is huge, we were testing various x86 and SPARC HW, various NICs on those drivers, we were testing Crossbow with Solaris Containers, with xVM, with ldoms, you name it. The result has paid off: We have only found a couple of minor bugs that we were able to fix instantly.

With phase I we are making the core Crossbow framework available: Virtual NICs, flows and the ability to do resource control for those. There are a lot of interesting use cases as I already described in my previous blog about the beta release blog: http://blogs.sun.com/markusflierl/entry/crossbow_beta_is_out
For more details check out the Crossbow web site on OpenSolaris.

Here is where you can download the latest packages: On http://pkg.opensolaris.org/dev/en/index.shtml, go to "Browse packages", go to the pull-down menue and pick the latest build of OpenSolaris.

We are now in the process of planning out the next phase. Additional performance enhancements are on top of our list, but we are also looking into expanding the feature set by adding bandwidth guarantees, flow control for SCTP and others. More to follow once we have a done our homework on that front.